Read the online version of the Daily Kickoff 

Good Tuesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview the Aspen Security Forum, which begins today, and report on concerns from Jewish members of the American Psychological Association over the group’s approach to antisemitism and Israel. We report on the backlash facing Rep. Jerry Nadler over his support for New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and do a deep dive into Georgetown administrators’ handling of antisemitism issues on campus and the school’s financial support from Qatar ahead of today’s congressional hearing on the topics. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Dave McCormick, Alex Edelman and Ron Dermer.

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The 2025 Aspen Security Forum kicks off today and finds itself unexpectedly thrust into the ideological fights gripping the administration.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it would be withdrawing numerous senior military and civilian officials who had been set to speak at the conference.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told Jewish Insider: “Senior Department of Defense officials will no longer be participating at the Aspen Security Forum because their values do not align with the values of the DoD. The Department will remain strong in its focus to increase the lethality of our warfighters, revitalize the warrior ethos, and project 'Peace Through Strength' on the world stage. It is clear the ASF is not in alignment with these goals.” Spokesperson Kinglsey Wilson offered even more pointed criticism to right-leaning outlet Just the News, saying the conference “promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the President of the United States.”

It’s tough criticism of a forum that prides itself on bipartisanship and aims to foster cross-partisan dialogue and solution-making, even as those attributes are in short supply in today’s Washington. The forum said in a statement, “we will miss the participation of the Pentagon, but our invitations remain open. … The Aspen Security Forum remains committed to providing a platform for informed, non-partisan debate about the most important security challenges facing the world,” noting that voices across the political spectrum will be speaking this week.

Many had been hoping to hear Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who was originally scheduled for a panel discussing the evolution of warfare, speak about his agency’s leaked report suggesting the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities had minimal effects, but Kruse was among the speakers withdrawn by the Pentagon.

Among the administration speakers still scheduled to appear are hostage envoy Adam Boehler, speaking on Thursday, and Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria. Barrack will be speaking on a Friday panel about the Middle East alongside former CIA Director David Petraeus and former Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell McCormick.

Read the rest of 'What You Should Know' here, and please get in touch if you’ll be attending the Aspen Security Forum. JI’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod will be reporting from the gathering all week.

From what’s happening to why it matters — this is the reporting insiders rely on to stay a step ahead.

GRAEME SLOAN/SIPA VIA AP IMAGES

Concerns about antisemitism in the field of psychology have followed the American Psychological Association since soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. With 172,000 members, it is the largest body dedicated to the study of psychology in the world. The issue has become a flashpoint again in the run-up to the APA’s flagship annual conference, which will be held next month in Denver and is set to feature several lectures — including some offering continuing education credit — that offer sharply anti-Israel narratives, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports in a new investigation.

Exclusive psychology: Several leading Jewish psychologists told JI that the APA has repeatedly failed to respond to the concerns of its Jewish members, despite a stated commitment to promoting an “accessible, equitable and inclusive psychology that promotes human rights, fairness and dignity for all,” according to the organization’s diversity mission. They say the APA has avoided taking a stand against double standards and litmus tests applied to Jewish psychologists who are vilified for their support for Israel. Instead, the organization has been almost paralyzed in the aftermath of Oct. 7, seemingly afraid to take sides between the Jewish psychologists seeking support and an increasingly vocal contingent of anti-Israel voices in the field, some of whom have described Zionism as a pathology to root out.

Read the full story here.

JI is committed to covering antisemitism. Catch up by reading our investigations on what Jewish professionals face in the mental health field and in pediatric medicine. Got a tip? Email us. 

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Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is facing backlash from some Jewish community leaders over his efforts to boost Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City whose fierce criticism of Israel and refusal to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” have stoked accusations of antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Details: Nadler, the dean of New York City’s congressional delegation and co-chair of the House Jewish Caucus, endorsed Mamdani shortly after his stunning upset over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in last month’s primary, and he has been working behind the scenes to build support for the nominee within the Jewish community, sources told JI. The 78-year-old congressman organized a meeting on Monday between Mamdani and local Jewish elected officials, some of whom chose not to join because of Mamdani’s hostility toward Israel, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Read the full story here.

Dem divisions: The pro-Israel Democratic party group Democratic Majority for Israel issued a scathing statement on Monday criticizing the party’s progressive wing amid Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan and the North Carolina state party’s recent passage of several anti-Israel resolutions, including one endorsing an arms embargo against the Jewish state, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. 

On the calendar: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is slated to meet with Mamdani this week to discuss an array of issues, including Mamdani’s defense of the “globalize the intifada” slogan.

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Around 400 Jewish organizations and synagogues signed onto an Anti-Defamation League backed letter Monday expressing concern over the “growing level of antisemitic activity” within teachers’ unions, which recently escalated with the National Education Association’s adoption of a measure targeting the leading Jewish civil rights organization, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned. Signatories include the American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, National Council of Jewish Women, Orthodox Union, Rabbinical Assembly and Union for Reform Judaism. 

What they said: The letter, addressed to Rebecca Pringle, president of the NEA — the largest teachers’ union in the U.S. — comes on the heels of a measure passed last week by the association that bars the union from using any teaching materials from the ADL. “The ADL has been a national leader in anti-hate education in K-12 schools for decades and is widely recognized as one of the country’s foremost experts on antisemitism,” the letter states, raising concern that, “although the measure does not explicitly say so, we understand that much of the underlying concern prompting this resolution is directed at ADL’s Holocaust education materials.” 

Read the full story here.

Hoyas in the hot seat: As Georgetown University’s interim president, Robert Groves, is set to be questioned about campus antisemitism on Tuesday morning by the House Education and Workforce Committee, the university is contending with several thorny issues centered around the Jesuit school’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, one of the country’s leading centers for Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, JI’s Haley Cohen reports. 

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A who’s who of U.S. and Gulf officials and some of the world’s leading tech and energy investors are en route to Pittsburgh ahead of Sen. Dave McCormick’s (R-PA) first-ever innovation summit on Tuesday, where he and President Donald Trump will announce $70 billion in investments aimed at turning Pennsylvania into a hub for artificial intelligence and new energy technologies, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports from Pittsburgh.

On the guest list: More than 60 CEOs and scores of top energy and AI investors are slated to be at the freshman senator’s inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, home to one of the world’s most advanced AI programs. Among the CEOs expected to appear are BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Palantir’s Alex Karp, Bridgewater’s Nir Bar Dea, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Amazon Web Services’ Matt Garman, Bechtel’s Brendan Bechtel, Chevron’s Mike Wirth, GIC’s Lim Chow Kiat, Brookfield’s Bruce Flatt, CPP Investments’ John Graham, EQT’s Toby Rice and ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods. (McCormick’s wife, Dina Powell McCormick, is on the ExxonMobil board of directors.) Others on the guest list include Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s president and chief investment officer; Raj Agrawal, global head of real assets at KKR; and Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, managing director and group CEO of Mubadala Investment Company.

Read the full story here.

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In a wide-ranging interview, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer connected Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the U.S.’ 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, saying that President Donald Trump wouldn’t have pulled out of the deal during his first administration without that precedent, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports. “I believe that what Iran’s strategy was [before Oct. 7] is to surround Israel with this ring of fire,” including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and militias in Syria and Iraq. “And this is another reason why I was so opposed to the nuclear deal that was done in 2015,” Dermer said in the first installment of his interview on Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast, which dropped on Monday.

Tracing it back: “And by the way, the attack [on Iran’s nuclear facilities] that happens now does not happen if Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t show up and confront that deal then. People don’t make the connection. I do, because I’ve lived it every day since then,” Dermer continued. “I don’t see Trump withdrawing if Netanyahu doesn’t take a stand, because no one’s going to be more Catholic than the pope, and no one’s going to be more pro-Israel than the prime minister of Israel.”

Read the full story here.

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The House Appropriations Committee’s draft 2026 National Security, Department of State and Related Programs Appropriations bill, released on Monday, aims to leverage U.S. funding for the United Nations to secure accountability for United Nations Relief and Works Agency employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. It also more broadly aims to enact cuts for the U.N. system, cutting all U.S. funding for the U.N.’s regular budget and barring funding for the U.N. Human Rights Council, including its commission of inquiry investigating Israel, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Concrete steps: The bill would ban any funding for the U.N. Secretariat, the arm of the U.N. led by the secretary-general responsible for daily management and operations matters, until several conditions relating to UNRWA accountability are met. The bill would hold the funds until the U.N. provides the State Department with a full and unredacted copy of the U.N.’s internal investigation into UNRWA affiliates’ involvement in the Oct. 7 attacks and until the findings of U.S. investigations into the situation are referred to the Department of Justice for appropriate criminal or civil action.

Read the full story here.

Exclusive: A bipartisan House bill set to be introduced on Tuesday aims to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, a step forward for an effort that gained steam following the terrorist attack in Boulder, Colo., targeting Jews advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza by a man who appeared to have expressed support for the group years earlier, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Digital Battleground: The New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers, Natan Odenheimer and Erika Solomon look at how Israel and Iran’s use of AI and deceptive social media posting during last month’s war between the countries has “ushered in” a new era of information warfare. “Over 12 days of attacks, Israel and Iran turned social media into a digital battlefield, using deception and falsehoods to try to sway the outcome even as they traded kinetic missile strikes that killed hundreds and roiled an already turbulent Middle East. … Iran, for example, sent alerts in Hebrew to thousands of Israeli mobile phones warning recipients to avoid bomb shelters because militants planned to infiltrate them and attack those inside, according to researchers and official statements. A network of accounts on X attributed to Israel spread messages in Persian trying to erode confidence in Iran’s government, including ones narrated by an A.I.-generated woman.” [NYTimes]

The MAGA Rebellion: NBC News’ Allan Smith looks at policy disagreements between President Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the party, including commentator Tucker Carlson, who openly clashed with Trump over the White House’s approach to the Israel-Iran war. “Carlson was center stage among MAGA influencers arguing for the United States to stay out of Iran, a position that has gained popularity on the right as some right-wing influencers have increasingly viewed the U.S.-Israel alliance with skepticism. That stance is also informed by Trump’s having promoted similar anti-war and anti-interventionist views for years, even as he has used military force as president. Ultimately, Carlson said, the most important voice arguing the case to Trump for the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ‘Turns out a head of state of an important ally has a more compelling message than I do,’ he said. ‘That seems reasonable to me. I still disagree, but I don’t think it’s like Trump has changed his views entirely.’” [NBCNews]

No Direction Home: In The Atlantic, Guy Ben-Aharon considers the challenges of his identity as an Israeli pacifist both at home and abroad. “In Israel, I’m hated for opposing a war that many say they don’t support but still fight in, defend, or explain away as necessary. Abroad, I’m no longer welcome among those who say that all Israelis are colonizers. I’m too Israeli to be a victim and too resistant to be a patriot. I’m in exile, even when I’m at home. … My own relatives question whether I belong in Israel, because I criticize the troops in Gaza for the killing and starvation of Palestinians. Abroad, a theater colleague once told me to ‘go back to where you came from’ — that I don’t belong in the land where I was born but in the lands where my ancestors faced pogroms and the Holocaust. Nuance has no currency in a world addicted to absolutes.” [TheAtlantic]

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YOUTUBE

Edan Golan recently released the music video for her single “You & I.”

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Israeli actor, he played Boaz in Season 1 of “Fauda,” Tomer Kapon turns 40...

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